Thursday, April 17, 2008

"It started with a lonely girl and a simple idea: tell a story incorporating the best elements of traditional narrative and online interactivity. Today that idea has transformed into EQAL (pronounced “Equal”), the social entertainment company dedicated to redefining the way we interact with content and with each other. Merging technology with creative development and production expertise, we are leaders in the creation and distribution of truly interactive shows. Formerly known as LG15 Studios/Telegraph Ave. Productions, we currently produce the two most successful online interactive dramas: lonelygirl15 and KateModern. Through partnerships with independent producers, traditional media companies, and multinational brands, we are launching new interactive shows and building online communities that engage users like never before.

We believe that the community is just as important as the content we create. With this as our blueprint, we construct interactive shows that transform passive viewers into active participants. Our shows entertain and enlighten, driving discussion and encouraging viewers and participants to immerse themselves in a shared entertainment experience. Interactivity lies at the heart of all our shows through the seamless integration of online discussion and live events with community generated content and professionally produced material.

As a social entertainment company, we are committed technologists with an eye towards leveraging the power of the internet to deliver interactive content. PHP, XML, and Javascript aren’t just buzzwords we throw around to impress investors; we deeply understand their utility and are building flexible and scalable web applications that encourage deep interaction between participants and the show.

Hey everyone, welcome to our new website. Congratulations to the folks at Anchor Cove for figuring out that we were up to something before we made the official announcement. As you might imagine, it’s been an exciting (and exhausting) year for us. We had so many opportunities after the hugely surprising success of lonelygirl15, but we realized pretty quickly that it was most important to stay true to the impulse that inspired us to launch lonelygirl15 in the first place: our desire to create new forms of entertainment.

We’ve spent the last year and a half working hard at producing lonelygirl15, launching KateModern, and figuring out a business model that works in this emerging medium. None of it would have been possible without the help of our incredible team and our amazing community of hundreds of thousands of passionate viewers. Of course, you all know the actors on each show, but you may not know James, Amanda, Kelly, Casey, Luke, Kevin, Yusuf, Marcello, and the entire lonelygirl15 and KateModern production teams without whom none of this would be possible. We are incredibly fortunate to be working with such an all star group of individuals.

It’s an exciting time for online entertainment. There are a slew of independent producers, digital studios, and social media companies sprouting up, not to mention the fact that traditional media isn’t exactly ignoring this whole “internets” thing. We’ve always wanted to stay independent and produce interactive shows that we could put our hearts and souls into, and sometime last fall we realized that raising money would give us the ability to remain independent and produce amazing shows on our terms.

After six months of fast food and airplane delays, we found a VC that shared our vision to build a company that would produce truly interactive shows. Many of the exciting innovations we’ve all talked about will finally come to fruition now that we have the funding to act on our shared vision. Needless to say, we’re very excited to get started.

No investors would have put a cent in this company without the passionate and amazing community that has formed around LG15. A sea change is under way, and you are all at the very beginning. We are so excited to take this ride with you and see where it will lead.Who’d have thought a video series co-starring a purple monkey puppet would come so far?Miles/Greg

We All Created EQALAs some of you may already know, today we officially launched our social entertainment company, EQAL. Thank you all so much for your continued support for our shows and this community. Check out the new website www.EQAL.com, the EQAL blog, and the first articles breaking the story.

"Spark Capital is a venture fund based in Boston, Massachusetts. Our investment focus is on the conflux of the media, entertainment and technology industries. Over the last decade, telecom, wireless, and cable operators have spent enormous amounts of capital building up their broadband infrastructure. The next decade will be spent monetizing this infrastructure. We will exploit this opportunity by investing in companies that we believe will benefit from the rapid transformation of media and content driven by innovative technologies and evolving business models."

"Conrad Riggs, a producer with Mark Burnett Productions (Survivor), did make a “small investment” in Lonelygirl15 before the series started striking brand integration deals, and LG15 studios rents office space from Riggs in Santa Monica."

"Ron Conway is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who was an early investor in Google, PayPal, and Ask Jeeves.He is featured in Gary Rivlin's book The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ron Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms, described as 'the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley'."

"Marc Andreessen (born July 9, 1971, in Cedar Falls, Iowa and raised in New Lisbon, Wisconsin, United States) is a multi-millionaire software engineer and Silicon Valley "whiz kid" entrepreneur best known as co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He was the chair of Opsware, a software company he founded originally as Loudcloud, when it was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. He is also a cofounder of Ning, a company which provides a platform for social-networking websites. Andreessen is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, having started 2 successful companies and working on Ning, his third venture."

Georges Harik was an early engineer at Google where he co-developed AdSense and AdWords advertising systems. He later led Google's internal startup initiatives, a program called Googlettes, responsible for developing new web applications such as Gmail, Google Video, and Google Groups.

"Frank is the father of Miles Beckett, one of the Creators. The senior Beckett appeared as a Watcher (bald and sporting a beard in the elevator) in The Human Ransom and again as a thug in They Shot Him!.When lonelygirl15 first started to get popular, Miles Beckett borrowed money from his parents to help pay Jessica Lee Rose's salary and to keep the project afloat.Frank Zajaczkowski's name was revealed in the first NowInLA.com podcast from the Creators on March 6th, 2007."

From Wikipedia:

Series A rounds are a critical stage in the funding of new companies. A typical Series A round is in the range of $2 million to $10 million and is intended to capitalize a company for 6 months to 2 years as it develops its products, performs initial marketing and branding, hires its initial employees, and otherwise undertakes early stage business operations.

eqal, inc. and eqal.com is a new company formed by the creators along with $5 million from new investors (including the founder of netscape among others) to be a destination and creator of online video entertainment. a good bet is that this means money for new shows, and the firepower to increase advertising revenue, to create a sustainable business model.

since lg15 was "outed" in sept 2006, there has been a slow awakening in the tech field and hollywood to the potential for really harnessing the internet as a video entertainment medium. i have no idea where it is all going, but the Creators and eqal are well-positioned to take advantage of the potential.

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via a mysterious poster, anchor cove was first tipped off to the existence of eqal.com about a month ago. see this sleuthing thread: